Anyone who follows debates around the statistics on intimate partner violence will know that there are plenty of myths, legends and zombies in circulation. Some of them go back decades. As a seasoned observer of such things, it feels like something of an honour to watch as a new myth is born before our eyes.
Yesterday the official homicide statistics were released by the Office of National Statistics. In keeping with the trend of previous years, there has been another fall in the murder rate, which is great news of course. The manifold reasons and explanations as to why the murder and homicide rate might be falling are complex, and I won’t even begin to cover them here. But in breaking the news for the Guardian, home affairs editor Alan Travis picked up on one explanation, which apparently originates with the ONS head of crime stats,
John Flatley, the ONS head of crime statistics, said two-thirds of murders involved partners or former partners or other kinds of family killing.
I don’t know where this quote was taken from, it is curious that it appears to be a paraphrase rather than a direct quote (ie there are no quotation marks). But pay attention to the phrase “or other kinds of family killing.”
Give or take the havoc caused by the occasional serial killer or spree killer, trends in homicide statistics are surprisingly consistent. The details of the latest homicide statistics won’t be published until January, but unless something truly unprecedented and spectacular has occurred, I’ll assume they follow the same trend as in previous years. For the past decade at least, slightly more than two thirds of murder victims are known to their killer – they are family members, household members, friends or acquaintances, and I would presume this is the category to which John Flatley was referring.
But as so often when journalists report statistics, a game of Whisper Down the Lane has occurred. (Yes, that is the approved, politically correct name for the old kids’ game, according to my own personal PC guru – my 10 year old son in a multicultural primary school.)
Travis’s report was discussed on Comment is Free by the normally scrupulously dependable criminologist Professor David Wilson, who said:
If the vast majority of murders come from within the home, it’s in changes to domestic life and policy that we find the most important factors behind the fall in the murder rate. Compared to 30 years ago, domestic violence is now treated as a far more serious crime.
Wilson goes on to praise innovative domestic violence interventions and adds:
The authorities are not only more aware of violence against women and children in the home but are now more willing to intervene with families earlier to prevent violence escalating.
Meanwhile over at the Spectator, Nick Cohen goes further, praising the success of feminism for the fall in murder rates.
My old friend Alan Travis of the Guardian explains the decline by pointing out that two thirds of murders involve a (nearly always male) partner abusing his (nearly always female) partner or ex-partner. Crime has fallen because society’s attitudes to domestic violence have changed utterly.
All of this would be wonderful if true. Unfortunately it isn’t.
The number of women killed by partners or ex partners over the past decade has hovered very consistently around the 100 per year mark. In 2010/11 there were 94. Since 2001 we’ve had a high mark of 117 and a low mark of 80 (in 07/08), but the overall trend is static.
I repeat, the figures up to June 2012 have yet to be released, but the only way the overall drop of 86 homicides could be explained by a fall in the number of female DV deaths would be for the number of women killed by their partners to have fallen to very nearly zero. If that is true, I’ll be celebrating with the best of them, while gobbling chapeau sandwich.
The whopping great mistake in all these reports (which may or may not originate with the ONS themselves) is to include ‘friends and acquaintances’ as domestic violence casualties. They’re not. Many of these ‘acquaintances’ may be rival drug dealers, for example. In fact, in 2010/11, the “friends and acquaintances” category was by far the largest subset of the group, accounting for 204 murders – more than twice as many as female DV victims. Every previous year shows the same pattern. The full category also includes children killed by parents; parents (including elderly relatives) killed by their children; sibling murders; husbands killed by wives and various ‘other’ combinations. Rather than accounting for over two thirds of murders as Cohen claims, in 2010/11 only 17% of homicides were women being murdered by their partners.
The most depressing part of this is not the factual inaccuracy, but that the myth being created is actively dangerous for women. The sad truth is that domestic violence deaths are the one major category of homicide statistics that are bucking the trend on violent crime. They are not falling – they are remaining stubbornly persistent.
Domestic violence services of all sorts are facing horrific cutbacks from local and national government and drop in charitable funding. These services are needed as much today as ever. It is horrifying to think that the establishment readers of the Spectator might reassure themselves with the thought that the need for intervention is less than it was. Cohen’s celebration of feminist achievement is premature, ill-judged and does no one any favours.
And as if the number of men killed by domestic partners is miniscule. Yeesh.
Yep.
The largest figures, for the record, under the ‘known to victim’ section are:
Friend/acquaintance – 205
Female by M.partner – 94
Son / Daughter – 40
Male by F.Partner – 21
(2010/11 figures)
And that of course won’t account for the acknowledged problem of male nonreporters. We’re never going to get a -real- grip on this until we get the help needed by all victims and work on helping perpetrators who actually can be helped (many can).
I realise it’s not the point here, but Whisper Down the Lane is a much better name than Chinese Whispers.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Cohen’s celebration of feminist achievement is premature, ill-judged and does no one any favours.
I agree and it’s actually worrying that a journalist of his standing would come to a conclusion that clearly has no basis in reality.Or maybe Cohen is just typical of male journalists,,For most seem to have little or no interest in seriously challenging feminist dogma with regard to the issue of domestic violence.And some may actually try to score brownie points with high profile feminists by doing what Cohen did and crediting them with something that didn’t happen in the first place.
[...] — A longer version of this blog-post is here [...]
[...] — A longer version of this blog-post is here [...]
Except Cohen isn’t just writing about murder but about domestic violence in general:
Since the 1990s, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service have taken domestic violence seriously. More to the point they were made to take it seriously by Harriet Harman, Vera Baird, Jacqui Smith and Labour’s other women ministers. I know they had a hard time in the Tory press — ‘crop-haired harridans’ and all the rest of it — but I admired their Cromwellian doggedness. Rather than follow the polls, they came to office with a clear determination to ensure that the criminal justice system treated women decently, and made damn sure that they got their way.
Other measures have helped drive down domestic violence. Rape crisis centres. Charitable and local authority efforts to get battered women away from their men and into emergency housing. Improvements in women’s education, and police campaigns that encouraged women to report and tackle abuse rather than treating them as ‘domestics’ to be kept in the family.
So without the figures for all domestic violence – and this itself is a highly controversial issue in that for instance, they exclude sexual assaults – which are overwhelmingly perpetrated against women, by men – many of whom are partners or former partners of the victims, has domestic violence seen the same decline as other crimes?
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, in a speech in April 2011, among many other things said:
The position is improving domestic violence now accounts for 14 per cent of violent crime whereas in 1997 it accounted for 23 per cent. But that figure is still far too high and the level of violence is disturbing.
So whether or not Cohen’s “celebration of feminist achievement is premature, ill-judged and does no one any favours”, is an accurate conclusion about his article, does it really constitute “a dangerous domestic violence myth?”.
Personally I doubt it.
Hi BTH
Long time no ”see”.Hope all’s well in your neck of the woods.
I agree with Ally that to suggest that a non-existant decline in women being murdered by their partners can be attributed to feminist achievement is a dangerous myth.The way i read Ally’s post was that the number of women being murdered by their partners has remainied relatively stable .In other words the overall decline in homicides in this country can’t in any significant way be attributed to a decline in women being murdered by their partners.Hence it’s wrong to suggest that feminist campaigning against DV has resulted in a reduction in the number of women being killed simply because no significant reduction has taken place.
The wider issue of DV is another matter.Feminists can certainly be credited for driving the issue of DV up the political agenda.And it’s a fact that women are more likely than men to be either killed or seriously injured as a result of DV.Nevertheless my gripe with what i call the ”feminist establishment” is that too often statisitcal data that can’t be properly qualified is used by them to play up the experience of women and play down the experience of men as victims of DV.Every year in the UK around 90-100 women,20-30 men and 70-80 children are victims of domestic homicide.And the figure for children may actually be higher.Additionally research that has been conducted in the past by the Home Office-where both sexes have been questioned- suggests that the level of victimisation amongst men is higher than most high profile feminists are prepared to admit.Cultural attitudes for instance go some way in explaining why male victims are less likely than female victims to go to the police.For there is still a double standard which dictates that ”only girls and cissies cry”. And therefore that a man who complains about an abusive women is somehow lacking in the masculinity department.
Finally many feminists promote the myth that children are safer with women and often talk about violence against women and children as though men are primarily the problem.However the fact is that women are just as likely as men to subject children to non sexual abuse defined as physical violence,emotional cruelty,neglect and verbal abuse.Additionally women are involved in the majority of domestic homicides involving children.Thankfully the majority of men and women are neither violent nor abusive.However the fact that women are likely to come off worse in DV doesn’t mean we should play down or ignore just abusive they can also be in their familial relationships.
good points Paul, thanks
You make a good point here:
.Cultural attitudes for instance go some way in explaining why male victims are less likely than female victims to go to the police.
For some reason there seems to be some slight of hand or something about how folks can go on and on about how due to culture women are still silenced and that account for so many women not speaking up with it comes to being abused but when talking about men being abused all of a sudden culture plays no role and the stats are perfectly correct.
I’m fine thank you, as I hope you are.
I am not disputing Ally’s statistics about:
The number of women killed by partners or ex partners over the past decade has hovered very consistently around the 100 per year mark. In 2010/11 there were 94. Since 2001 we’ve had a high mark of 117 and a low mark of 80 (in 07/08), but the overall trend is static.
What I am asking is why when Kier Starmer reports a decline in DV from 23% of all violent crimes in 1997, to 14% in 2011, this is not reflected in the number of murders.
Or maybe it is as taking Ally’s high and low points gives a decline of 31.7%. Taking the high point and the 2010/11 figure shows a decline of around 20%. This is not as he claims an overall static trend if my calculations are correct. And I’m quite prepared to agree that this isn’t my strongest field and would welcome a correction and explanation.
Except Cohen isn’t just writing about murder but about domestic violence in general:
Oh come on.
He’s explicitly saying the reason the homicide rate has fallen is because feminists have been so successful in addressing domestic violence.
That’s quite obviously false. It cannot be true, because just about the only form of homicide that isn’t falling is domestic violence murders.
And I think creating a false factoid that the numbers of domestic violence murders are falling rapidly, at a time when so many DV services are being cut back or closed down, is downright dangerous.
See my reply to Paul. (pbj2)
“they exclude sexual assaults – which are overwhelmingly perpetrated against women, by men”
They are perpetrated against men, by women, far more than commonly believed. I’ve often heard feminists say that 99% of rapists are men, but according to the latest CDC survey, 4.8% of all men have been “made to penetrate” and 79.2% of the perpetrators were women.
Examples of “made to penetrate” are: a woman who has sex with a man who is passed-out drunk, or a woman who forces a man to have sex with her through blackmail or physical force. There is some confusion due to the fact that their definition of rape excluded “made to penetrate” and only included men who had been penetrated. That was far less common (1.4% of men) and was mostly perpetrated by men. However, if you include “made to penetrate” as rape, which you should, since it is forced sex, the number of men raped by women is much higher, far more than the 1% many feminists claim.
Examples of “made to penetrate” are: a woman who has sex with a man who is passed-out drunk,
I might ask how would they remember, but more seriously, you’ve not posted a link to the CDC Survey and that would be useful.
I seem to be in pre-mod ???
Hi Paul – it’s set up so the first comment you make needs to be approved and then you’ll go straight through after first approval. Anti-spam measure. Sorry for the nuisance.
Looks iike you used a different log-in for the post as pbj2, which is why you needed approval.
No worries Ally.For some reason i can’t log-in here so have to go elsewhere and come back.Plus as you say i logged in as pbj2 instead of yours truly-hence the pre-mod..
@Dean
How would male victims of domestic murder either report or not report the crime?
They wouldn’t obviously. We do know, however, two things for certain: Female-on-male domestic violence is underreported (men are far less likely to report, and less likely to be believed if they do report), and, women who kill their intimate partners are more likely to get away with it. Thus, our ability to know exactly what’s going on with it is difficult. But it is hazardous to assume that this is a miniscule problem. Especially when, at least here in the US (I don’t know about you Brits), the rate of female-initiated violence has been going up sharply over the last couple of decades.
I don’t think the police take domestic violence particularly seriously. I had the police round once after my ex-boyfriend left threats to kill me ( on the wrong person’s answer phone). They asked if he did that kind of thing much, and I said, ‘now and again’. I gave them his phone number so they could follow it up, but he told me he never got the message when I asked him later.
Hi Sarah, welcome.
From what I can gather, there are huge variations from one force to the next, and even from one evening to the next, depending who’s on shift.
I think the broad point is correct though, there’s no doubt police response to DV has changed massively over the past 30 years
Thanks for the welcome, heptat. Civilising blog you have here.
Very good post, thankyou for writing this.
There is another very dangerous myth here though, that DV is being taken more seriously.
In my experience, over the last year, one in eleven police officers actually understand that DV is more than being beaten, one in eleven police officers will listen without shaming, one in eleven will at least try to help. Sadly, after speaking to other women who have had recent experience with the police in DV situations the number is a rough trend. Outside of being beaten or violently sexually assaulted many (majority male) police officers just dont get it, adding to the feelings of shame, blame and isolation, making a victim much less likely to return to the police for help.
Sad times all round.
I note the two places that reblogged this post put the ‘dangerous for women’ line in their titles…
I actually find the way domestic violence is presented in our culture is dangerous for men.
It presents men as always the perpetrators of domestic violence and men who suffer dv rarely speak out. as for ‘support services’ many of them are aimed at women only and are informed by radical feminism. I am not sad to see all the cuts that are currently happening.
and I say this as a ‘survivor’ of domestic violence who has taken a long time, inspite of feminist rhetoric to forgive my ex and move on.
I hope this blog never civilises me!
[...] has lead to a number of online comments including: * A dangerous domestic violence myth is born * A Bunch of Men Got Together to Pretend that Domestic Violence is Falling Share [...]
[...] in July, I wrote a blog entitled “A dangerous domestic violence myth is born,” which queried the claim made by journalists Alan Travis and Nick Cohen, and criminologist David [...]
[...] Ally Fogg has written a new article A dangerous domestic violence myth revisited in which he repeats his claim that: “The number of women killed by partners or ex partners over the past decade has hovered very c… [...]